Introduction The Colloquium is the culmination of a collaborative study: Rethinking Hemispheric Security and Strategy: Ten Years after the Mexico City OAS Declaration. The focus is rethinking strategy in the Western Hemisphere. 5 themes from the research are presented at the Colloquium.

Presenter 1: Rear Admiral Richard Greenwood, Canadian Forces

Content: Many positive directions have developed in collabortive defense and security over the last 30 years. The LA contribution to global security has increased by 719 %. Defense and security among nations has never been easy or automatic. Every ally wants to do the least with the most credit and be the ONE that solves the problem. Defense strategy itself pulls away from cooperation. Jealousy, revealing weakness or vulnerabilities, and the automatic move toward worst-case planning. The idea of Northern or Eastern hemispheric cooperation is not an accepted norm in the defense world. Shining examples of cooperation (when it works really well) show that mutual respect (Good Neighbor Policy) supports deep reform across borders for the last 8 years. The lesson is that LA asked for peace relationship in 1945. It is not a case of the U.S. bludgeoning others for cooperation. Transformation is affected by geographic divide by Columbia, ideological divide from a traditional Left wing versus recent political moves toward the right. The institutions for cooperative system is hampered by the geographic and ideological factors. Mexico and the Caribbean exhibit change in the use of military forces for nonmilitary actions. Further south the dynamic successes in Guyana and Suriname for cooperative confidence building measures, natural disaster relief plan. The many factors contributing to change are not hemispheric but geographical and regional.

What is to be done? The need for a mindset change will be founded on the truth that the old North and South Americas are gone. The questions that must be answered are the problems, and priorities. All problems are not the fault of the U.S. That said, many changes must happen in North America: modernization of forces, natural disaster cooperation, reform of security apparatus, handling the increase of the military role, border control (SMART borders tech), timely intelligence, confidence buildings, creation of a defense community, building capacity for jointness, improved exposure of armed forces to peacekeeping.

The key is building confidence. Two generations of leaders have been poisoned about the values and aims of the U.S. We must show commitment to mutually respect, common interests and working together to build a new defense and security cooperative system. Europe is in the western hemisphere for territorial interests only, not external interests.

Content: How is Brazil in the World. The Brazilian border shares with 10 SA countries and a huge coastline. Comparatively Brazil has the largest border in the Western Hemisphere. Border security became a military problem in 1999. The Green Amazon borders 7 countries. The problems are ON the borders, not the borders themselves. Brazilian military works for cooperation versus dissuasion. The Amazon system is integrated with the remaining border for cooperative border control. SISFRON surveillance system is the future vision to establish a unified presence at the border.

Presenter 3: Ivelaw Griffith, PhD, Provost of York College, City University of NY

Content: The focus is that there is a collaboration imperative for small states. Regional Caribbean Security as described by exPM ANR Robinson frame Griffiths emphasis on context. You don’t have hemispheric collaboration just because you have a hemisphere. The nature of the configurational enterprise. What matters is the regional landscape manifests itself on the special security challenges that acrue. The components of the challenges requires understanding differences of the nature of the states. Voltaire’s principle of defining the terms before getting too far into the conversation means that decisionmakers must look at the reasons for security in the region. Traditional security (border disputes) do still exist but are secondary to the danger and endurance of nontraditional threats (drugs, crime, arms trafficking). The common denominator is the transnational and multidimensional nature of the threat. Security is no longer linear because you must deal with all threats all the time. The nature of the global arena means that all countries overlap multilateral engagement zones. Small state capabilities have many resource issues to contend with: housing, water supply. The capability challenges undermine the ability to exercise sovereignty. Institutionalization and cooperation challenges have “platitude syndrome”: a big speech or treaty looks good but requires follow up in domestic legislation that change platitudes into meaningful execution and evaluation. The Dimensional Cooperation Challenge: the difficulty of cooperation within and among institutions.

Summary: Collaboration is an imperative in the context of the fixed nature of the Caribbean states.

Introduction The Colloquium is the culmination of a collaborative study: Rethinking Hemispheric Security and Strategy: Ten Years after the Mexico City OAS Declaration. The focus is rethinking of strategy in the Western Hemisphere. 5 themes from the research will be presented at the Colloquium.

Presenter: Deputy Asst Secretary of Defense Frank Mora

Content: Sect’y of Defense Leon Panetta’s visit to South America highlighted innovation to establish new defense and security partnerships and alliances. Moving forwarrd in the current complex security environment has seen progress since the OAS Declaration in 2003 in the creation of a vision for the Armed Forces and agreements on norms.

The System: Sec’ty Panetta noted important opportunities emerging as SA countries are exporting security within and beyond their borders. The proliferation of bilateral, subregional, and multilateral defense is evidence of a system of defense cooperation in the hemisphere. A mature interamerican defense system is vital to address current needs. Current defense and security is trending toward Central American security capacity builiding through training, troop and equipment provision. The U.S. is pursuing bilateral defense and subregional partnerships to leverage the resources of partners to confront transnational crime. Collective efforts by defense partners is having a positive impact on regional and global peace and security. The new realities of defense cooperation underpins many documents. Collaboration is the foundation.

The Institutions: The foundation lies in the institutions that made up the former defense and security system. OAS works to build formal defense relationships to share best practices with other instituions. The environment surrounding defense and security institutions of increased professionalism and increasingly unthinkable interstate conflict change the strategic foci. The political commitments of the OAS 2003 Declaration are mandated to address multidimensional threats and require interagency and multinational response. Western hemispheric defesne institutions have responded to the new security environment. The role for defense institutions is to strengthen defense cooperation.

Defense Cooperation: What does defense cooperation mean? It means more concrete cooperation. Chile, Brazil, and others have increased administration and logistical support for cross country ministerial action. the CDMA Board is also developing more collaboration activities. Further discussion is needed to define the role for institutions as useful fora for deeper cooperation and effective action. Strong leadership and national participation is vital to steer the instituions into the 21st Century. Failing to effectively partner will increase risk.

Change Over Past 10 Years: Current threats were unthinkable 10 years ago. All security organizations are moving toward citizen security. The overwhelming attacks on democracy are overwhelming nonmilitary security resources. Militaries are increasingly asked to perform nonmilitary security action. US DoD feels that commitment to partnership has a multiplier effect on global security. The US/Mexican sharing of information has resulted in increased defense cooperation with other countries.

Challenges: The defense industry needs to challenge the assumption that military inclusion actually militarizes anything. But the support of democracy, respect for human rights, rule of law and civilian authority must be supported carefully. Leaders must address the military as the last resort. A professional force must be trained in dealing with civilian populations with respect and professionally. Nonmilitary missions must be short term, not long term solutions to problems. Militaries cannot assume the responsiblities for civil institutions. Defense institutions are not teachers, medical services, and must remain apolitical and supported to civilian authority.

Conclusion: A strong defense system of cooperation can address the 21st century defense needs through a multilateral approach to advance peace and security throughout the hemisphere. Countries are moving daily toward this cooperative trend. The institutions that provide this foundation must continue to expand the dialogue on topics that affect each member of the colloquium. Sec’ty Panetta states a commitment to reinvigorating U.S. participation in the region. The lack of unanimity to strengthening hemispheric collaboration must not be a block.

Thirty-nine states and the District of Columbia have charitable solicitation statutes that generally require charities and their for-profit fundraising professionals to register prior to soliciting contributions or providing fundraising counsel services. Attendees will learn about these statutes from a former state charity regulator and former president of the National Association of State Charity Officials. Equally important, charities and their fundraising professionals who have been operating in violation of these statutes will learn the most appropriate strategies for getting into compliance.

Solicitation: anything you do by asking people to make a contribution.

Grantwriters: are not considered professional soliciters but are professional counselors. Your organization is assumed to be registered in each state that you solicit a grant maker.

Charleston Principles: drafted in 1999 to address burdensome internet solicitation that must register in all states where solicitation originate. These Principles suggest that if an organization is only soliciting by website (Donate button) in other states, that charity should not have to register with that state until that charity resolicits (makes a followup call, writes a letter). Then, the charity only needs to register in each state where resolicits. Most organizations unknowingly have donors from a large number of states. The exemption of $25,000/year does not require registration as long as no one is compensated for fundraising. Email contributions eventually provide you with a physical address of the contributor, so solely asking online still requires you to comply with each state’s requirements.

1.) Determine if you need to register under the charitable solicitation statute in your home state (39 require this: go to www.nasconet.org to find out). The links are provided to each state website for detailed information. Some states fine up to $1000 or $100/ day.

2.) Are you in compliance with applicable state charitable solicitation statutes in ALL states where you solicit contributions. Each state has various exemptions and exclusions. Usually the exemptions cover religious organizations. But, it’s not uniform across the country. Exemption in your home state does not cross to every other state. Formal application for exemption can be an annual process. Many states have conditions that determine exemption from solicitation statutes. You can use each state’s individual registration for OR a Unified Registration Statement (www.MultistateFiling.org). That can save you alot of time and effort. It’s a little lengthier. SC., Maine, Ok and a few other states do not accept a Unified Reg Statement.

3.) Make sure your IRS 990 Returns and other registration materials filed with the IRS are accurate, complete, free of material falsifications, misrepresentations, and omissions.

4.) Maintain your registrations by filing timely extesnion requests each uear and renewing your registration by the required due date each year. Extensions are needed because you won’t have your 990 done by the state(s) registration date(s). States are moving this online so it’s becoming easier. Penn, NC, and Wash are granting automatic extension.

5.) Make sure that all your professional fundraisers are properly registered and have filed copies of their contracts with state oversight agencies as required. Many are required to have written contracts, post bond and file campaign reports. The contracts may need to be filed with the state oversight agencies. States do cross check these names and numbers. Many of the fundraiser reports are published annually.

6.) Make sure all your organizations’ solicitation materials contain any disclosure statements required by statutes. A Disclosure Statement only requires information for each state about contributions from that state.

7.) Makes sure any commercial co-ventures conducting charitable sales promotions for you organzation are registered, have the required bonds, have filed copies of your contracts and other required forms with all states where commercial coventurers are required to register. So approach a charitable sales promotion cautiously. Be sure you are getting enough through the co-venture.

9.) Make sure your organization is keeping true and accurate fiscal records–even if it is exempt from state registration requirements. States can investigate an accusation of wrong doing even if it is in

10.) Make sure your organization is paying all your key executive only “reasonable compensiaton” not “excessive compensation”. This is a high focus arena in law enforcement right now (So how do you know what the IRS expectations are?). Also, be sure you are properly forwarding all required withholding taxes to the IRS and state taxing authorities. That is the most common thing IRS finds iwrong n an audit.

Takeaways: States are often unclear about charitable solicitation compliance. Don’t wait for a state to “catch” you. You get a better deal by registering voluntarily.

Personal Reflection: Why is it that states are so consistently unclear about charitable solicitation? The threat of fines from the state, IRS, etc are threatening in the sloppy world of charity. Achieving a full understanding of individual state requirements and compliance is burdensome to NP’s. This policy arena needs to be synchronized across state borders. States are the ones that are behind on their responsibility. It’s not fair for them to just impose fines, it is state responsibility to keep up with the changing internet economic system that NP’s (and all of us) swim in. The state move to put their requirements online helps, but the requirement for NP registration with every state is out of date with the actuality of nationwide and international internet economic trade. When do NP’s get to fine states for dragging their feet and making charity nearly impossible?

SoftChalk is an e-Learning authoring solution that lets you easily create, share, deliver and track engaging e-Learning content. SoftChalk CONNECT is a cloud-based learning object repository with hosting services where you can collaboratively manage and share SoftChalk e-learning content. You can share open education resources (OERs) with a global community of educators, discover shared content to use in your own materials or take advantage of the features offered with CONNECT Plus. CONNECT Plus provides the ability to host your content for delivery to your learners, manage learner access and track score results.

Sue Evans: SoftChalk CONNECT is shared content protected under Creative Commons. The HomePage is a public repositiory, but you can create an account and build personal material and selectively open access to the material. So re-using SoftChalk CONNECT content is ok.

ScoreCenter has various ways to collect and track scores. The software increases flexibility in creation and distribution of content.

Interactivity can be added to SoftChalk content through 25 tools for hyperlinks, embedded audio/video, hotspot image activity, point scoring for immediate feedback. Scoring is available on the lesson page.

The lessons are stored on your computer Desktop. SoftChalk creates the folder and stores the elements of your lesson.

Package or Publish your content. Package: allows you to import to a variety of conte LMS content managers (Moodle, Angel, Canvas, etc.), or an executable file that can export to a computer. Publish: the SoftChalk will host your content, you can share with the community. You can also embed, publish to Blackboard, etc. You can always access the SoftChalk Support Center to identify what publish/package is best for you. Guides are available.

SoftChalk does not have a livefeed or whiteboard capability. You may be able to embed a live feed tool into SoftChalk as a widget. Contact SoftChalk to see how that can be done.

Conclusion: SoftChalk is constantly updating with new technology. They are currently working toward increasing mobile availability.

Takeaways: This presentation is an introductory tutuorial on how to create lessons in SoftChalk. Basically anything you can put in webpage you can put into a SoftChalk lesson.

Resources: SoftChalk has and ongoing free webinar schedule, tutorials, and a free 30 day trial. SoftChalk CONNECT is a free, cloud based repository available at http://softchalkconnect.com/.

Personal Reflection: The reworking of learning through universal access to information on the internet is reworking how we think about lesson creation. How to address teaching and learning when the entire universe of knowledge is instantly available to your students? When in human development do we turn from teaching information to teaching online research skills?

GuideStar has partnered with the Nonprofit Finance Fund (NFF) to develop Financial SCAN, the first data platform to offer a comprehensive, multi-year analysis of a nonprofit’s financial condition. Financial SCAN translates IRS Form 990 data into a standardized, easy-to-understand, and visual analysis. Complete with dashboards, charts, peer comparisons, and an educational guide to assist with interpreting the results, our new resource offers a more comprehensive picture of financial health than is currently widely available.

Content: The revenue uncertainty of the current economic environment requires some way to communicate financial health. NFF connect NP financ to NP success by connecting funcders to NP’s, improve the flow of money and maximize impact.

Financial focus is important because good financial governance is the core of a successful organization. Other traits such as leadership and development are secondary to good financial management and structure. Long term effectiveness is driven be financial health, but a common language and tools to reveal financial health is lacking in the NP sector.

Understand the Operating Performance (No margin=No mission);

Determine the strenght of the balance sheet: liquid cash to future opportunity ratio (risk management in relationship to future opportunity).

1.) Income state: Revenue – Expense = Surplus/Deficit: Find out the Revenue dynamics: Where does the money come from? Is it realistic? Is it reliable and repeatable? Expense dynamics (what NP spends on) is less important than well managed.

Finding the bottom line on any NP statement is complicated due to donor imposed restrictions. Net assets reflect the restricted monies and create a false bottom line. So focus on the unrestricted column to locate unrestricted liquidity. Form 990 gives a false impression of how the NP performs because it shows restricted monies.

2.) Balance sheet: Assets – Liabilities = net assets. You have to go to the Balance Sheet to truly account for restricted monies and thus see the NP’s true performance. Understanding a balance sheet requires asking questions about assets and liabilities.

Capital Funding is unfortunately mingled with revenue and distorts the picture of NP performance. The unrestricted surplus may be inflated by capital flows.

Tax status is not a Business Model/: NP;s need to consider full costs and whether revenue is sufficient to cover them. Full costs > Operating Expenses.

Breaking even is never enough: As an indicator Surplus relfects health only when surpluses consistently cover full costs.

Basic Financial Health Metrics: In assessing NP financial health liquidity is king. There must be strategic financial thinking about how to better serve the community. Look at the number of Months of Unrestricted liquid net assets (monies available for operations) . Financial Health is 3+ months of cash and working capital. Moderately health is liquid cash sufficient ot cover the cyclicality of cash flow.

NP Financial Health Checklist:

Operating result are consistently positive.

Full costs are regularly covered by reliable revenue.

Reinvestment in fixed assets to offset depreciation.

Evidence of management of debt.

Liquidity is sufficient to withstand risk and pursue new opportunites.

Personal Reflection: The tendency for the NP sector to be overly self critical could send this online financial analysis awry. The wide variety of financial structures that must accomodate the myriad of NP organization missions means that many of these organizations will never look right in the NNF lense. The whole point of NP’s is to adapt to changing needs of the community. The approach of the SCAN implies long term oriented financial structure that is static. Maintaining 3 months of complete liquidity and showing positive productivity does not support the experimental room needed for innovation and a “fleet of foot” response to community need.

Also, the NFF SCAN does not account for external economic factors that impact NP finances. For example: 2008 completely rewrote the financial world of both profit and nonprofit financial structure. Few NP’s would have achieved the NFF SCAN healthy status in 2008.

Where I can see the SCAN working really well is to jugde the notoriously non-self critical for-profit sector (FFN, you should expand into investment finance critique). I think the SCAN online tool could save many people from the investment & mortgage frauds and pyramid schemes that are rampant in the U.S. What would happen if U.S. citizens required for-profits to list themselves on the NFF SCAN before handing over investment dollars? What would Madoff’s organization have looked like on the NFF SCAN?

Higher order teaching for real world learning for real world problems:

Problem based learning (What do we need to know?What is the issue?). There should be comnplex, ill-structured rabbit holes and trails.

Case studies

Simulations

Role-playing

Conclusion: Put Bloom’s taxonomy into action. Educator’s must be ok with challenging students to the point of being uncomfortable that will make them jump to the next level.

Resources: SoftChalk has a webinar series, a blog and tutorials at http://softchalk.com/learn-more. DukeTIP offers the Digest of Gifted Research, (formerly the Duke Gifted Letter) with hundreds of posts for parents of gifted children on educational, social and emotional, and advocacy topics. The Digest is a trusted resource for research-based information about raising and educating academically talented children, and The Educational Opportunity Guide, a comprehensive online database of year-round and summer educational programs.

Personal Reflection: The curriculum still controls where students go for data on the web. That’s not real world learning. Predigested learning isn’t real world. Students have the entire web freely available to them in their real life world.

Reggie Brady: The purchasing funnel (customer moving from brand awareness to purchase) has changed. The number of channels for purchasing is exploding and you need to be where the potential customer is. Mutlichannel marketing is multi-touch. The complexities of multichannel marketing require integrated marketing based on data about what does and doesn’t work for your product. Your challenge is to meet the customers at the right time, the right channel (where they are comfortable), with the right message. Blending the company focus with the customer focus moves through relationship marketing to multichannel marketing. Engaged customers spend 3-6 times more time than the average customer. The cross-channel customer spends 7X’s more than the average customer.

How to get to the engaged customer? Integrated marketing is tricky. To win in the multichannel world use integrated customer analytics (if they tell you what you need) track in real time and 2 more points . It’s all about the customer.

Components of marketing relevance: Customer data requires segmentation and expertise: inciteful use of advanced tools (a good ROI), and using imagery and colors for a message that is relevant to your customer.

Relevancy means Segementation: organize your customers into groups and message them at their level(s). Start with about 5 meaningful segments. Don’t get overcomplicated. Test you messaging with what you already know about the segment. Look at the conversion rate from click to purchase.

John Goering: The endgame is to leverage data across channels . Find out as much as you can at the personal level so you can communicate at that level. Find the right medium of data for your product: social interaction is informal, print is tangible, and email is inbetween. Example of customer retention: WebMD customization program (http://www.webmd.com/) that has a low cost engagement program.

Reggie Brady: Efficient retention happens when customers feel you care about them, they’re not just another customer. One example that sends that special message is triggered email (a trigger sends an email) . Managing multichannel streams can be split into 5 leverage points: response time, sequence, pacing , frequency, and channel.

New Mandate for Campaigns: Enable the real-time management of messaging, data analysis, and retrival of information. Enhance the relevance and personlization of your message, improve data and process integration across business units.

John Goering: Leverage one-to-one communications to build a new holistic view of the customer (email address, twitter address, etc) and google analytics. Over half of internet users use of online brands from off line media channels. Print continues to be the number one channel. Non-profit direct mail retains 75% of donation share. Variable marketing data shows average of 35-50% improvement with multichannel campaigns.

Organizational silos inhibit integration. The silos are the result of separating marketing groups for each channel. To solve these problems have all channel groups report to the same person, develop cross-channel functional teams, create new compensation structures to encourage collaboration.

Track across channels: Inadequate tracking misleads you to close essential channels when they are actually interacting. Have an ongoing testing strategy to measure across channels.

John Goering: Data capture is just as important as centralization. Getting the full loop of the customer is vital to combine and leverage the data.

Conclusion: The more you get an individual involved the more you become part of their DNA. Your business focus is to break down silos, track trends then act on those trends.

Summary:

Use all of the channels that make sense for your business.

You are only as good as your data. Data that is captured in real time is vital.